6 Golf Courses with Devilish Names
Golf can be a devilish game. Whether or not you’re among the fortunate few to play arguably the No. 1 course in the United States, Pine Valley in New Jersey, chances are you know well the devilish ties there—from the sprawling sandy hazard called “Hell’s Half Acre” on the par-five 7th hole to the fearsomely […]
Tom Doak’s Sedge Valley – A Sub-Par 70 Design at Sand Valley
By Tony Dear Golf course design priorities have seen a welcome shift in recent years. The emphasis on demanding, arduous golf has started to give way to fun, sustainable courses that you’d want to play again and again. The new wave is seen in the boom of short courses across the country (Pinehurst’s Cradle, […]
100 Years of Pebble Beach: A “New” Course for the U.S. Open
By James A. Frank In 2019, Pebble Beach Golf Links will celebrate its 100th birthday and host its sixth U.S. Open. To commemorate these milestones, each issue of Links Magazine and LINKSdigital between now and then will tell the unique story that is Pebble Beach. Every golf course is a work in progress, changing over […]
Royal Golf Club: From Corporate Playground to Community Course
By Adam Schupak When Art Fry, co-inventor of the Post-It Note, visited the construction site of Royal Golf Club in Lake Elmo, Minn., he took one look at the stunning clubhouse view of Horseshoe Lake and said, “I’ve played a thousand rounds here and I never knew there was a lake there.” That’s just […]
Arcadia Bluffs South Course – A True Modern Classic
By Tony Dear Thanks largely to social media, the names C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor have become familiar to more than just a small group of golf historians and architecture geeks in recent years. As their fame has grown, so has the desire to play the numerous top-100 courses they designed during the Golden […]
Country Club of Orlando – A Renovation Lesson for Classic Clubs
By Graylyn Loomis I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, where hilly terrain and serious elevation change are standard on most golf courses. With that upbringing, I’ve often been skeptical of courses on flat land, finding them uninteresting. But, over the last few years, my bias has eroded as I’ve seen what […]
The Hotchkiss School Course: A Raynor Course Open to All
Golf architecture geeks surely know the name Seth Raynor. A local surveyor (and non-golfer) plucked out of obscurity by Charles Blair Macdonald to help him build the National Golf Links on Long Island, Raynor became Macdonald’s partner, the yin to his yang, and following his boss’s “template hole” formula designed a number of notable […]
What Next for the Bally Bandon Sheep Ranch?
By Tony Dear It has become decreasingly mysterious with every passing article—and there have been many—but the Sheep Ranch still possesses sufficient intrigue and anonymity to ensure the golfer recounting his experiences of the place speaks mostly to a hushed audience. Images and stories have been filtering through for nearly two decades, and its […]
Restoring a Classic: Sleepy Hollow Country Club
By Ian Critser With a resume that includes restorations at Winged Foot, Merion, Fishers Island, and dozens of others, Gil Hanse is no stranger to giving new life to classic courses. While Sleepy Hollow Country Club north of New York City may not be as well known, the work that he and his team have […]
A Deep Dive on the Black Course at Streamsong Resort
By Graylyn Loomis Walking Streamsong Black before it opened, I was struck by its size and scale. The fairways were wide, the greens huge, and everywhere you turned were long views across thousands of acres of central Florida. It took me more than a year to return with my clubs and actually play the […]
